On Monday, President-elect Donald Trump said he was the “best friend” Israel ever had and repeated the threat that there would be “hell to pay” if Hamas doesn’t release the hostages by the time he is inaugurated.
Trump made the comments when asked by radio host Hugh Hewitt if he would provide “uninterrupted” military aid to Israel.
“Well, I’m the best friend that Israel ever had. You look at what happened with all of the things that I’ve gotten, including Jerusalem being the capital, the embassy getting built,” Trump said.
The president-elect said that any “major event” that’s happened to Israel in recent years had “been given through” him, including the normalization deals with the UAE and Bahrain, known as the Abraham Accords.
Trump was then asked what he meant when he said there would be “hell to pay” if the hostages weren’t released, a threat he first made over a month ago. “If those hostages aren’t released by the time I get to office, there will be hell to pay. I don’t think I have to go into it anymore,” he told Hewitt.
In his original threat, Trump appeared to suggest the US might take direct action against Hamas. “Those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America. RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW!” he wrote on Truth Social on December 1.
Israel’s most hardline elements have celebrated Trump’s victory and view his next term as an opportunity to annex the West Bank. In a sign the Trump administration will likely support such a move, Trump has named former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, a staunch supporter of Israeli settlements, as the US ambassador to Israel.
During a visit to a West Bank settlement in 2017, Huckabee said, “I think Israel has title deed to Judea and Samaria. There are certain words I refuse to use. There is no such thing as a West Bank. It’s Judea and Samaria. There’s no such thing as a settlement. They’re communities, they’re neighborhoods, they’re cities. There’s no such thing as an occupation.”
